I am a biologist interested in the ecological processes that facilitate the invasion and establishment of microbes in a new environment. In particular, some of my work revolves around the interplay of diet and gut pathogens. More broadly, my scientific research leverages high-throughput experiments and machine learning to illustrate how ecosystem structure influences ecosystem functions such as community productivity, community assembly, and colonization resistance. I received my PhD in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics from Duke University in the Lawrence David lab. I am currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Robert Britton lab at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. See http://firasmidani.com for the most recent updates on my work.